


Runaway Stars

by alteringegoism



Series: The Young and the Dangerous [3]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Crimes & Criminals, M/M, Nerdiness, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-24
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2018-02-18 11:22:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2346680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alteringegoism/pseuds/alteringegoism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”</i> - Carl Sagan</p><p>Zayn Malik was born balancing between two worlds: Pakistani and English, traditional and modern, academic and artist, and yet always struggled to find solid footing in either. Then he meets Niall, the bright, new boy with a kindred love of computers and creation who bursts into his life like a shooting star and brings with him colour and warmth and belonging. The world is a darker, colder place indeed when his light is ripped away.</p><p>It turns out it's true what they say, that attitudes are contagious. Careful, Harry and Louis, 'cause Zayn's might just end up killing you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Runaway Stars

The new boy blew into registration on the first day of lower sixth, his darker than navy blazer unbuttoned and hanging off of his skinny frame, striped tie askew in between the open flaps. Contrary to the college's mandate, his attire didn't look very smart at all, but his bright blue eyes fairly gleamed with easy, open cleverness. Light steps carried him across the floor. He threw his body full force into the empty chair to the left of Zayn. The space filled with the boy's presence as if it had always been waiting for him to come alive.

A green and white snapback flattened his tufts of brown hair and blindingly white Supras engulfed his feet. Zayn would have thought him a chav, but he was fairly certain that the graphite Louis Vuitton messenger bag that he shoved and kicked under his desk was real, as was the brown alligator and gold Patek Phillipe wristwatch that he banged against the side of the desk setting out his things.

The boy grinned and grimaced simultaneously when he caught the direction of Zayn's glance. The off-white glint of discreet braces flashed. "Gifts, yeah? Gotta use them or else you're plagued to your end of days with whinging and pouting." A single shoulder lifted and fell.  _What are you going to do?_

Quick curse words dropped out of the boy's mouth as the contents of his standard issue plastic wallet spilled across the narrow surface of the desk. Bits and bobs rolled and clattered to the floor. Reflexively, Zayn bent to gather the ball point pen and rubber that knocked against the side of his scuffed, black dress shoe and flipped over the ID card that landed in the aisle between them. He placed all three items on the closest corner of this Niall Horan's desk without a word and then tucked his fingers away inside the frayed cuffs of his grey school jumper.

"Thanks, bro."

Zayn dipped his chin in acknowledgment. After a long moment of not exactly awkward silence, the form tutor called out. Both turned to the front of the class where their attention remained for the rest of the period.

A week of small waves and polite nods passed. One morning, Zayn glanced over as Niall–hatless and plain shoe dress code enforced, which somehow only served to accentuate the energy that fairly thrummed through lanky limbs–reached into his leather LV bag and lifted out a 15-inch MacBook Pro. It took Zayn an inordinate amount of self-control to refrain from rolling his eyes up into their sockets. Useless, bloody rich kids. The other booted up and Zayn did a double-take at his operating system.

"Is that Debian?"

Niall looked at him out of the corner of his eye, the angle sharp. "Yup."

Zayn didn't know what to say after that and so said nothing, which was not at all unusual, and Niall paid him no more attention. But something undeniably had changed.

The very next morning, Zayn started off with a simple, "S'up," and made eye contact that lasted longer than half a second. His legs angled slightly into the aisle, bent knees pointed left. An older model Asus laptop sat open in front of him with a closed black sketch book propped against the keyboard.

"Mornin', Zed," Niall replied immediately, grin lighting up his face. "Sick tag, bro." He nodded at the slashes of dark marker coiling and cutting through the white space of a 'HELLO, my name is,' sticker slapped on the front of the sketch book.

Zayn had rarely been more glad of the darker complexion that hid the heating of his face. The sketch book disappeared under a wall of crossed arms. His shyly scrunched brow pointed down to his desk. "Thanks," he mumbled into his chest. "I, uh, like your skin."

Niall possessed no such concealing armour of pigment and flushed a lovely shade of pink. 

"The ram skin!" Zayn fairly squeaked out at a pitch not heard since puberty. "On your Mac."

Niall threw his head back in a braying laugh, cheeks still aflame, but all the more joyous for it. "Fan for life here. So long as you're not for Forest, all's top drawer."

Mesmerized by the smooth line of the other's working throat, the tipped open, inviting mouth, Zayn barely roused in time to throw his fist out in a quick, reciprocal dap before the day's announcements commenced. The two didn't speak again that period, but somehow it felt like whole conversations had passed.

Like a pair of equal sized binary stars, their influence, their attachment, evolved naturally. Increasingly, they gravitated towards each other in between periods, at lunch, in the guilds and quests of MMORPGs, and in the murky programming subforums of the far corners of the Internet. But, strangely enough, never through call or text via the sleek iPhone that Niall rarely had out of reach.

Zayn had questioned him about it exactly once. Niall's claim of its use for emergencies only had rung both true and false by omission. All Zayn knew was that it lit up and beeped with messages constantly, and that if Niall failed to reply within minutes, it inevitably rang. At that point, no matter when or where he happened to be, Niall always answered.

Following along at Niall's elbow through the bustling hallway at the end of the day, Zayn took a deep breath and worked up the nerve to tug at Niall's sleeve just before the point where their paths normally diverged. The crowd parted like a creek rushing around two immovable stones. "Did you, I dunno, want to come round to mine, watch a film or summat? I'll even do Fifa."

The beginnings of a smile tugged at Niall's lips before it deflated abruptly. "I would, I want to, but I can't. My ride is waiting. I live about an hour away on the M62."

"That far? Well, what about tomorrow then? You can stay over even, if that's easier for everyone," Zayn offered, nerves buzzing at the idea of having Niall in his private space for an entire night. He scratched at the back of his dark head just to occupy his fingers.

Niall shook his head slowly, his jaw flexing. His voice, when he answered, was strained. "No, it's not...a good idea."

"Your folks dead strict, or what?"

It didn't seem possible, but Niall's face pinched even tighter. "Something like that. Look, I gotta run. See you tomorrow?" 

Barely waiting for Zayn's farewell, Niall took off at a quick trot, messenger bag clenched in his hands. Instead of turning down the hallway to his own exit, Zayn followed Niall at a distant, sedate pace, body obscured by the crush of people. The bobbing head of shaggy brown hair sped out the main entrance and down the wide, curving front drive. Niall walked along the sidewalk and out to a line of vehicles parked a discreet distance from the school.

A gangly young man with riotous brown hair, dressed in painted on, dark wash skinny jeans, a tight, white v-neck, and shiny black Ray-Bans, sprang off the side of the ginormous, privacy tinted Range Rover he had been leaning on. His long arms swallowed Niall up. The brutish hand that he placed on the back of Niall's neck as he ushered him into the passenger seat was proprietary. Zayn watched them drive away.

"Why do you go to school in Bradford, when it's so far for you?" Zayn asked first thing in the morning after they had settled into their seats. Niall had been conspicuously offline the entirety of the previous evening.

Niall scrubbed a hand over his tired face before plastering a smile to it. "Because Harry didn't want me slumming it with the local council kids anymore, but neither did he want me getting airs rubbing elbows with the minted set at some posh boarding school. This school, and its Computing curriculum, was the compromise."

"Who's Harry?" Zayn questioned certain he wouldn't like the answer, but he needed to know.

"The guy you saw picking me up. My boyfriend."

Zayn grabbed for and fiddled with one of his charcoal pencils, brown eyes fixed upon the pointed length. He spun it continuously around his fingers in an effort to distract from the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"Is that going to be a problem?"

The pencil clattered against the desk and rolled to the floor. Neither made any move to retrieve it.

"No. Never."

The smile on Niall's face physically shrank, but at the same time expanded into something more honest, more intimate. Zayn responded with a smile of his own, the kind of which he rarely allowed himself, one that showed his teeth and turned his eyes to deeply warm slits. Sitting next to Niall, he couldn't hope to keep it contained. It stayed firmly in place as they launched into a discussion of Niall's new circuit board and what they should do with it first. Zayn warmed at the implication of future, collaborative endeavours.

At school, whenever possible, they met up and attached at the hip, soldering iron poking out of trouser pockets and rapid fire debate on code development trailing in their wake. Across all manner of platforms (except mobile), they argued about what code to write from scratch–why reinvent the wheel? but garbage in, garbage out, bro–to where they should pull the data that would trigger the relay for the hackable device.

They both agreed on a battery operated toy, naturally, but could Niall get any lamer than a Furby? Zayn favoured a noisy, light up, dancing Oshawott himself, though he refused to explain or examine too closely why. The answers in the end were: Twitter's API, @niazkilam, and Zayn got his way on the toy through sheer stubborn insistence.

Early one Tuesday, Niall pounced and threw his arms around Zayn's shoulders the moment he stepped through the double doors where the brunette boy had been lurking in wait. Zayn caught him effortlessly. "Guess what? I can stay over at yours tomorrow night, if the offer still stands. Have a proper slumber party where you can braid me hair and finally finish off our project."

"How'd you swing that?"

"Told Harry that I absolutely had to stay back and work on my GameMaker project with good ol' Benny boy. Everything about him checked out with flying colours, like I knew he would."

Benedict Ackerley, while perfectly agreeable and about as exciting as milk toast, also happened to be the homeliest boy in their year. Zayn kept his tongue between his teeth to hold back all the questions he wanted to ask; there was no surer way to send Niall into shutdown. "Wicked, bro," Zayn said instead, that vulnerable smile of his peeking out.

They walked down the hall, arms brushing often. "Harry's still driving out to drop me off at Ben's," blue eyes rolled, "and I got to put in an appearance for at least an hour or so to wrap up some loose ends, but after that I'm all yours."

Zayn's fingers twitched buried in the cuffs of his jumper. "Wicked," he repeated.

At 5:00 pm, Zayn stood waiting at the corner of two residential roads, cigarette dangling from his lips and smoke trailing up into the overcast evening air. Three houses down, a front door flew open and Niall bounded down the steps, a cheerful, "Later, man," called out on his way. He grinned and waved upon catching sight of Zayn and jogged over. The LV bag that rested on his hip bulged well beyond the point of fashionable. 

The grays, and blues, and blacks that coloured the world around Zayn sharpened in focus and took on the gleam of metal and dusk. He stubbed out his butt and waved the smoke out of Niall's face. They fell into step and, side by side, walked the reasonably short distance over to the Malik's modest house. 

"I like it," Niall took his shoes off by the door and proclaimed. "It's a home."

Zayn gave Niall ten minutes for introductions, during which the gregarious Irishman thoroughly charmed his mum and sisters, before dragging the other up to his room. They spent the next two hours in near heaven cutting open the torso of the Oshawott, swapping out the wires to the toy's activation switch and connecting them to the relay and the control circuit with its LCD screen that would, fingers crossed, display any tweets made to @niazkilam. They pieced the toy back together in companionable silence and plugged the whole thing into Zayn's desktop.

Niall only had to excuse himself twice to answer his mobile.

In between, they ate a rushed, mandatory dinner. Niall exclaimed over the korma and the salad, the naan and the potatoes, in equal measure to his parents' delight. Zayn had to cut him off after his third helping of fruit and qulfi and march him back upstairs.

"You ready, bro? Moment of truth," Niall said from his position sprawled out on the twin bed, the code uploaded, a serial monitor open on the screen of his MacBook. The white textbox showed the circuit board's progress as it connected to the Internet, sent a request to Twitter, and searched for new tweets.

Zayn stretched out beside Niall. Their bodies aligned from shoulder to shin. "Pull the trigger."

Niall's fingers fairly blurred as they moved in a flurry of keystrokes. His Twitter account popped up, an @CruiznCamino, and apparently Niall moonlighted as a 54 year old Chinese woman from South Africa with a strong interest in vintage muscle cars.

Niall hit enter with a flourish and an infectious laugh. A moment's pause and then 'Tweet Found!' appeared on the serial monitor. It logged the tweet's unique ID, the text, and the sender, a Ms. Xiuxiu He, next. Over on the desk, the blue and white plush pokemon let out its high pitch cry of 'Oshawott' and shook its round booty in an elliptical pattern. The shell on the sea otter-inspired creature’s chest flashed gold. Zayn sprang off the bed and across the floor in time to catch the beginning of the tweet that scrolled across the LCD screen. 

_Haha, smashed it! Love ya!!! Pints!!!_

Returning to the bed, Zayn slapped hands with Niall before moving past him. "This calls for a celebration." He dug an arm around under the mattress, the bastion of secrecy for teenagers worldwide, and emerged with a blunt. Zayn held it up high.

"Oh, you cheeky monkey," Niall said, blue eyes twinkling.

They turned off the lights, stuffed the bottom of the door with an old sweatshirt, and opened up the single, small window near the head of the bed to the night sky. Balancing their bony backsides on the narrow sill, they lit up and took turns passing the blunt back and forth. Their relaxed, open faces tilted to the heavens. Fingers brushed in silence as tendrils of smoke exhaled and curled in lazy wisps. The last of the embers burned out and Zayn carefully set the roach aside. Left with the cool night air and the warm, syrupy satisfaction that weighed down their bodies in the most pleasant of ways, it felt only natural to entwine their fingers and hold on.

"Tell me about your dreams." Niall's Irish lilt had thickened considerably.

The words came out hushed, like a secret, like a confession. "I want to make, to create beautiful things."

"So you should," Niall said and the blue eyes that settled on him seemed to reflect all the light in the world.

"My dad wants me to be a solicitor."

"Nothing wrong with that either. You got choices, Zed, and all the time and opportunity to make them."

"What about you?"

"I want to escape.” Niall’s answered quick, decisive. “Go somewhere new. Be someone different. Don't much matter where or who." 

"As long as you take me with you," Zayn murmured. The only answer he received was a hard squeezing of his hand. "Do you believe in soul mates?"

Niall's gaze returned to the stars. "I believe that there are people that need you, ya know? Cause maybe you have something they don't. And maybe you need them too for the same reason, and when it's good, it's great. And when it's not, it's completely fucked up, but you're stuck in needing those parts to fill in the holes."

Narrow chest rising and falling, Niall inhaled a deep, sighing breath. Beside him, Zayn held his. "But there are others out there, ones that you choose. Apart, you're still you. You're still whole, but together you're more. Better. You're with them because you want to be, not cause you can't walk away. And I like that. I want that."

"Me too," Zayn had only enough air to whisper.

"I'm about to sound like a proper sap, but promise me, Zayn, that you'll always follow your heart."

Zayn took a moment to consider the weight of the question, the gravity and responsibility that they implied. Niall was asking so much of him. Zayn answered, strong and clear. "I will."

"Good. That's all I want."

But Zayn could not say the same in return. He wanted everything. And when Niall dropped his iPhone face down on the bedside table, after they crawled into his small, twin bed, just about the moment they settled in close, fine hair tickling his temple and sweet breath skimming the angles of his face, and right as lips touched in perfect understanding, he felt like he had it.

They took to spending their lunches off campus, just the two of them. Zayn introduced Niall to all of the local eateries that his family had been patrons of for years. Watching Niall eat the foods of his childhood and culture, Zayn felt like he was discovering the flavours and spices and sheer pleasure of it for the first time all over again. 

It happened on a Wednesday afternoon, one lunch. The point where everything went to shite. Sitting in a takeaway kebab house, Niall stuffing his face and Zayn buried in his sketchbook in an attempt to capture the moment, the shadow that fell over them was an unwelcome intrusion.

Niall's head shot up like a startled doe. "Louis! Is Harry here?" His head swung around in jerky motions.

The young man with longish waves of stringy brown hair and sharp cheekbones to match the glint in steel blue eyes leaned the jut of his bony hip against their table. His whipcord lean body coiled with suppressed forced. "Do you think lover boy would still be sitting here with you in one piece if he was?"

"We're just having lunch," Niall said, sullen and withdrawn and quite unlike Zayn had ever seen or heard him. 

"Has sucking so much cock rattled your brains? Don't be a bleedin’ fool." Louis stomped over to Niall and yanked him out of his chair by the elbow. "We're leaving. Now."

Zayn jumped to his feet, sketchbook forgotten on the table, and only Niall's hand steady on his chest stopped him in place. Over his shoulder, Louis bared his canines at him.

"I have to go with this dingbat and I need you to go back to school. Please, Zayn. I'll be ok." 

As always, Zayn could deny Niall nothing. He fell into his seat, throttled frustration making him shake, and watched as Louis winked and dragged Niall out of the restaurant and into a waiting vehicle. He didn't see him again for the rest of the day, nor for the next.

On Friday, Niall showed up to school with bruises on his wrists and a busted lip. Zayn feathered the tip of a finger over the red, swollen flesh. "Was it Harry?"

"No! Of course not. He wouldn’t dare. It was that cunt, Louis, reminding me of something I was beginning to forget."

"And what's that?"

"My place."

"What? That's bullshit, Niall! I don't know what's going on-"

"No, you don't," Niall interrupted. "And I hope you never do. You have a great family and the world at your feet, you're so fucking talented, Zed. I won't let anything get in the way of that."

"Niall-"

"Zayn. Please, let it go. For me." And despite his mind screaming at him to do the exact opposite, to pick Niall up and run off into the night, he did as bid.

Zayn had two more weeks with Niall. Two more weeks of peace and laughter before Niall disappeared from his life and off the face of the earth. Zayn, who had spent his whole life in a balancing act between two worlds, Pakistani and English, traditional and modern, academic and artist, conformer and outcast, felt like both had been pulled out from under him. Only with Niall had he unquestioningly belonged. Losing that, losing him, Zayn was lost.

Zayn searched online obsessively. Queries on Harry and Louis triangulated in the North West eventually brought up petty crime reports and obscurer, filthier things that took more time and persistence to unearth. The name Styles popped up repeatedly. Exploiting human stupidity and weak, shitty passwords, Zayn dug into e-mails and banking activity that drew a clearer picture of what exactly Niall had been trapped in. Weeks passed and Zayn's sketchbook lay untouched on a dusty shelf in his room.

The morning dawned cloudy and dismal the day that Zayn walked past the campus and onto a train to Manchester. He shed his gray school jumper like a skin to reveal the ratty, faded black tee underneath. The ride passed in silence, his face fixed towards the window, brown eyes unseeing of the landscape that whipped by.

Wraith-like, he drifted along the streets of Manchester chain smoking cigarettes and haunting the outside of seedy looking buildings that had been mentioned in those police reports and in cryptic e-mails. A ghost however, was no match for the devil.

The fist that slammed into his jaw caught him unaware and sent him crashing to the cold, unforgiving concrete. Blows calculated to bruise the deepest and gift the most pain rained down on his hapless body. Even had he been standing, had he seen it coming, Zayn in his current incarnation was no match for the vicious efficiency of Louis Tomlinson.

Merciless hands dragged his unresisting body to the curve in the concrete marking the edge of the sidewalk. The hollow of Zayn's cheek depressed around the concave. A grimy rubber sole pressed down on the side of his slack face. 

"Should fuckin' curb stomp you into the afterlife to meet your Allah, fuckin' Paki."

The foot lifted. "But you're not worth the blood on my shoes."

Tears of rage and shame and gratitude leaked from Zayn's eyes. 

"Be glad you found me instead of Harry. Word of advice, babe. Forget Niall Horan ever existed. If I catch you here again, your ending will be worse than his."

Zayn would hear those words as though they had happened only the moment before in the years to come. He would recall with clarity the clearing of the throat, the guttural swish of fluids before the warm spittle landed on his cheek and its cooling slide along his skin. He would know the rhythm and cadence of those steps walking away and leaving him drowning in hate.

It took hours to drag his bloody, beaten body home. Zayn cleaned up as best as he could in the loo of a McDonald's, scrubbing desperately at his cheek until it rubbed raw before staggering the last few metres to sanctuary. He rushed past his parent's horrified faces and locked the door to his room. Stripped naked, he fell into the old, enveloping sheets of his bed and ignored everything that pounded and battered at him from beyond. He lay shivering and aching and staring out into the star filled sky.

The Oshawott on his desk went off in a flash of light and sound. Zayn startled out of his stupor. Falling off the bed and stumbling across the floor, his throbbing eyes stared down at the lit up LCD screen. 

 _You are the soul I choose_.

Zayn shattered.

The dust of him floated out into the universe, some of it rebounding in altered shapes and forms, coming back harder, colder, stronger. Much of it gone never to return in the winds of the supernova. Later, when he searched for Niall's anonymous Twitter account and found it deleted, he lost a little bit more. The bits of his heart hurtled away from him through space and time. The fractured emptiness filled with an insatiable hunger for vengeance. Zayn kept his promise to Niall and followed.

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this was not the easy, breezy bloodbath that I had originally envisioned. Of all the boys, I find Zayn's voice the most difficult as my perusal of YouTube videos and fan gifsets has revealed the least about him. I hope I'm at least somewhat in the ballpark.
> 
> Please excuse any techie and/or A Level schooling errors. I have never been part of either.


End file.
